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Google Abandons Touchless Chrome Browser for Feature Phones

posted by martyb on Friday September 13 2019, @12:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the touching-story dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://9to5google.com/2019/09/11/google-scrapped-touchless-chrome-android-feature-phones/

For the past six months, we've been tracking Google's progress on introducing feature phones as a new form factor for both Android and the Chrome browser. Now it seems plans may have changed, as Google seems to be removing all of the code for Chrome's Android-based touchless mode.

Early this year, we discovered that Google was working on a version of Chrome that was designed to be used by feature phones without a touchscreen, a form factor that still sees significant usage in emerging markets. This "touchless" Chrome even included a bonus standalone version of the Dino Runner mini-game reworked for the new screen size.

This morning, reader Kawshik tipped us off to a new work-in-progress commit with the straightforward title, "Remove touchless* with the exception of Blink code." In the code change, we see Google removing all references to touchless Chrome and deleting the hundreds of files within the "touchless" folder.

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  • (Score: 2) by hwertz on Friday September 13 2019, @05:22PM (1 child)

    by hwertz (8141) on Friday September 13 2019, @05:22PM (#893749)

    Yeah probably not useful.
    Inexplicably, my Dad has a flip phone (he had no problem using all sorts of scientific equipment as a research scientist, but won't learn how to even read a text...)

    This thing came with a browser, but it appears to be the Android "Browser" browser (The one that shipped up to Android 4 or so by default, with Chrome being a downloadable option.) It's straight-up weird though, it's not really modified to not need touch; instead, it turns the menu keys into a "mousekeys" like mode; the little screen has a mouse cursor on it, which the menu keys move around, and the "select" button clicks.

    A) He never uses that browser either. B) I don't think it has enough RAM to run Chrome. This is probably the bigger point; throwing a browser on a feature phone is one thing; making the feature phone more expensive (adding RAM and storage) just to accomodate the browser is quite another.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 13 2019, @08:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 13 2019, @08:36PM (#893843)

    but won't learn how to even read a text...

    Or perhaps does not WANT to be bombarded by a pile of retarded mindless attention whoring "text" messages.